The Buddhist Traveler in Kyoto

To visit Kyoto, Japan’s former imperial capital (794–1868), is to tour the history of Buddhism in Japan. It is practically impossible to take a hundred steps without passing a place of worship, whether it be a small shrine or a grand monastery with UNESCO World Heritage status. The city features more than 1,500 Buddhist temples that represent all the major schools of Japanese Buddhism, many of which started in Kyoto. A whole book would not suffice to describe the city’s many important historical Buddhist sites, so here is just a small selection:

1| To-ji

Belonging to the esoteric Shingon tradition, To-ji is the oldest remaining Buddhist temple in Kyoto. Shortly after Emperor Kanmu declared Kyoto his capital in 794, To-ji was built as a protector temple for the new capital. Its five-story pagoda is the tallest wooden structure in Japan. On the 21st of each month, the temple hosts a flea market, where you can find anything from Buddhist art to antiques, talismans, bargain trinkets, and snacks.

2| Kiyomizu-dera

Though this ancient temple was established in the 8th century, most of the current buildings were built in 1633, after the original temple structures had burned down or fallen into disrepair. The wooden main hall and its viewing platform are famous for being constructed without the use of a single nail—a somewhat scary thought considering the hundreds of tourists who crowd the platform to admire the temple’s foliage in fall and the cherry blossoms in spring. Popular belief has it that anyone who survives a jump off the forty-foot-high platform will be granted a wish. Until the practice was outlawed in 1872, daredevils regularly tried their luck, with a survival rate of around eight in ten.

3| Sanjusangen-do

This 12th-century temple was built for the monk-emperor Go-Shirakawa (1127–1192). The main hall displays an enormous 800-year-old seated statue of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, surrounded by an army of 1,001 human-size Kannon statues, each with eleven faces and forty-two arms, who stand at the ready to ease suffering.

4| Ryoan-ji

Situated on the north side of Kyoto, this temple features a world-famous Zen meditation rock garden. The presence of the temple’s many tourists may not be conducive to a meditative experience, but if you are hungry, you can stop by the temple restaurant, which serves the Kyoto specialty of yudofu (boiled tofu). Another lunch option is to take a thirty-minute bus ride to the Tenryu-ji Zen Temple. This temple is famous not only for its gardens but also for its Michelin-rated vegetarian restaurant.

5| Kinkaku-ji

Just a twenty-minute walk from Ryoan-ji, this golden pavilion will be familiar to fans of Yukio Mishima’s 1956 novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. The novel was inspired by the 1950 destruction of the temple’s pavilion by arson. Mishima presents the incident as a nihilistic act of nonattachment: The arsonist destroys the temple to free himself from his attachment to beauty. In reality, the pavilion was set ablaze by a young monk who suffered from schizophrenia. The current golden pavilion, built in 1955, is a replica of the original.

6| Mount Hiei

Situated near Kyoto’s northeastern border, this temple-dotted mountain is the birthplace of multiple schools of Japanese Buddhism. In 788, the Buddhist master Saicho (767–822) settled on Mount Hiei to build Enryaku-ji as the headquarters of his newly established Tendai school. Four centuries later, Honen (1133–1212), a monk at Enryaku-ji, concluded that the purest form of Buddhist practice was chanting the name of Amida Buddha. His disciple Shinran (1173–1262), who also studied at Mount Hiei, founded the Jodo Shinshu Pure Land tradition. Dogen (1200–1253), another Enryaku-ji monk, considered sitting meditation (zazen) the most essential form of practice and founded the Soto Zen tradition. Yet another monk who studied at Mount Hiei around this time, Nichiren (1222–1282), started a Buddhist movement centered on the Lotus Sutra. This movement came to be called Nichiren Buddhism, which eventually gave birth to today’s Soka Gakkai movement, among other Nichiren schools.

Mount Hiei has been a Buddhist pilgrimage site for centuries, with ancient trails that wind from temple to temple through pine and bamboo forests. To explore the trails and absorb the lingering energy of all these past spiritual masters, you might want to spend the night on the mountain and book a room at the Enryakuji Kaikan Inn. The inn offers traditional vegetarian meals and an onsen bath with a view over Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest freshwater lake to the east of Mount Hiei. Guests of the inn are invited to join a sunrise chanting session at the ancient Enryaku-ji shrine. (The temple is currently encased in scaffolding due to a renovation project that is scheduled for completion in 2026.)

7| Konpuku-ji 

If you’ve made the trip to Mount Hiei, consider stopping here, near the foot of the mountain. Tucked away in a corner of the temple grounds is the hut where the famous Haiku poet Basho (1644–1694) used to stay when he traveled from Tokyo to visit his friend, the head monk of Konpuku-ji. Basho himself reminds us that even when traveling to Kyoto, one never truly reaches it:

In Kyoto,
hearing the cuckoo,
I long for Kyoto.